"Each generation, coming out of obscurity, must define its mission and fulfill or betray it." Frantz Fanon - The Wretched of the Earth James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. {r}evolution

Our mission is to nurture the transformational leadership capacities of individuals and organizations committed to creating productive, sustainable, ecologically responsible, and just communities. Through local, national and international networks of activists, artists and intellectuals we foster new ways of living, being and thinking to face the challenges of the 21st century.

A General's Assessment

This week much of the top-secret report prepared by General Stanley McChrystal assessing the U.S. position in Afghanistan was declassified and made public. The 66-page document is worth reading. The media has focused on the General’s predictable recommendations. He wants more troops. Immediately.

But there is much more to consider in this report. After years of glossy, distorted information about U.S. military actions, this starkly written document is a revealing account of the failures of the eight year effort to stabilize Afghanistan. If we take the General’s assessment seriously, his call for additional troops in the short run is nothing less than an unending commitment to a military presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan far into the next decade. Without immediate commitment of troops, McChrystal says,

“Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

These troops are not intended to do more of what they have been doing. In McChrystal’s words, one of the great failures of the military in Afghanistan is that it has learned little in the eight years of warfare it has already conducted. Yet McChrystal now expects to learn lessons to create a strong “counter insurgency strategy” that acknowledges the “situation is serious” but “success is still achievable.”

For many people, this effort at winning the hearts and minds of Afghans has an all too familiar ring. McChrystal himself describes the primary reason why this is impossible, no matter how many troops we send in. In the report McChrystal accurately describes an Afghan government riddled with corruption and incompetence. The most recent election is but another example of men out to protect their own power and to line their own pockets. From drug trafficking to political repression, the Karzai government will never be able to win the hearts and minds of anyone it can’t buy.

McChrystal writes, “The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of powerbrokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials…have given Afghans little reason to support their government.”

Meanwhile, whatever else anyone thinks of the Taliban, they have been able to create forms of stable, incorruptible government. McChrystal writes that the Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) headed by Mullah Omar, who fled Afghanistan after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and operates from the Pakistani city of Quetta, has been working “to control Kandahar” and “there are indications that their influence over the city and neighboring districts is significant and growing.”

Mullah Omar’s insurgency has established an elaborate alternative government known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which is capitalizing on the Afghan government’s weaknesses. “They appoint shadow governors for most provinces, review their performance, and replace them periodically. They established a body to receive complaints against their own ‘officials’ and to act on them. They install ‘shari’a’ [Islamic law] courts to deliver swift and enforced justice in contested and controlled areas. They levy taxes and conscript fighters and laborers. They claim to provide security against a corrupt government, ISAF forces, criminality, and local power brokers. They also claim to protect Afghan and Muslim identity against foreign encroachment.”

It is the contrast between the government we support and the one we fight that led former President Carter to say it’s time to find another way. Carter said, “Every time we launch one of our unmanned drones from Kansas and kill 100 people, we make 100,000 new enemies.” His advice is “negotiate.”

Most Americans have already concluded that this war is a fool’s errand. President Obama needs to listen more closely to those who put him in office.

ON Being Krista Tippet

ON Being Krista Tippet
January 19, 2012
We travel to Detroit to meet the civil rights legend Grace Lee Boggs. We find the 96-year-old philosopher surrounded by creative, joyful people and projects that defy more familiar images of decline. It's a kind of parallel urban universe with much to teach all of us about meeting the changes of our time.
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Boggs Center 3061 Field St. Detroit, MI 48214

James and Grace Lee boggs Center To Nurture community Leadership
hpp//www.boggscenter.org / {r}evolution - the two side non-violent revolution in values.
The Boggs Center was founded in 1995 by friends and associates of James Boggs (1919 -1993) and Grace Lee Boggs (1915 - ) to honor and continue their legacy as movement activists and theoreticians.
Our aim is to help grassroots activists develop themselves into visionary leaders and critical thinkers who can devise proactive strategies for rebuilding and respiriting our cities and rural communities from the ground up, demonstrate the power of ideas in changing ourselves, our reality, and demystify leadership.